Adelanwa Bamgboye
23 September 2008
Lagos — The Federal Government has realised about N587 billion proceeds from the privatisation of public enterprises between 2004 and 2007.
Mr Sanusi Sule, Deputy Director, Post Privatisation Monitoring Department of the BPE, said the figure contrasted with a total investment of about N11.5 trillion in establishing the public enterprises between 1975 and 1995.
Speaking at a workshop, organised by the Bureau in Calabar for workers in the South-South states, Sule said that contrary to expectations, the activities of the public enterprises established by the government were characterised by inefficiency, ineffectiveness and corruption which made returns on the investments very poor. He disclosed that though the privatisation programme began in January 1989, it started yielding reasonable results in 2000,and that the "watershed" years of the privatisation transactions were 2005 and 2006.
"Whereas the years 2000 to 2004 were used to reposition the programme after the lull years of 1994 to 1999, 2005 and 2006 can be dubbed the watershed years in terms of transactions concluded," he said, adding, however, that highest proceeds were recorded in 2007. According to him, between 1989 and 1999, only 55 enterprises were privatised as against 146 privatised from 2000 to 2007. A breakdown of the transactions showed that between 1989 and 1999, N2.5 billion was realised from 55 transactions, N14.7 billion from six transactions in 2000 and N12.1 billion from 11 transactions in 2001. Thirteen transactions, according to the data, fetched N1.3 billion in 2002, N0.3 billion in two deals in 2003, N50.2 billion in eight deals in 2004 and in 2005, 45 transactions realised N172.2 billion. In 2006, N150.3 billion was realised in 30 deals while 31 of such transactions in 2007 fetched the government N183.7 billion. Sule also said that between 2000 and 2007, a total of $10 billion (about N1.15 trillion) which would have been transferred to the privatised enterprises for their operations were saved.
(NAN)
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